NOISY, ANGRY, JOYOUS | Women around the world demand equality

Women march through Quiapo on International Women's Day. (photo by Romeo Ranoco, Reuters)

LONDON — In joyous celebrations and angry protests, women around the world came together in gatherings large and small on Thursday to mark International Women’s Day with a call for gender equality.

The day had extra resonance this year after widespread sexual abuse accusations in Hollywood sparked the #MeToo movement which feminists hope signals one of the most significant shifts toward equal rights in decades.

Women of the #MeToo movement in Seoul, South Korea protest. (photo by Kim Hong-Ji, Reuters)

In Saudi Arabia, a group of women whooped and cheered as they marked International Women’s Day by exercising a recently acquired freedom: the right to go for a jog.

Women run on International Women’s Day in Old Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. (photo by Faisal Al Nasser, Reuters)

Women in the deeply conservative kingdom are hopeful of huge changes. The government introduced physical education for girls last year and began licensing women’s sports clubs, but Saudis are still coming around to women running in public.

“This is just the beginning of a revolution for women in Saudi Arabia. In jobs, in our lives, in society, everything is going to change for Saudi women,” said one of the joggers, university student Sama Kinsara.

The biggest change yet will come in the summer when Saudi women will be allowed to drive.

Protesters form triangles with their hands during a demonstration for women’s rights in Bilbao, Spain. (photo by Vincent West, Reuters)

In Spain, women went on a nationwide strike and held hundreds of rallies, closing many main roads and squares.

Their protests included bike rallies, marches, and midnight pot-banging sessions at which they chanted slogans such as “We continue to fight regardless of the cost!” and “Long live the women’s struggle.”

The two largest unions said around 6 million women took part. There was no official count.

Pain and sorrow

In Turkey’s Hatay province, near the Syrian border, women wept as they sat on the ground, their hands bound with scarves, to show solidarity with women imprisoned in Syria. Others waved flags, chanting against President Bashar al-Assad: “Murderer Assad, evacuate the prisons!”

Activists march Istanbul, Turkey. (photo by Murad Sezer, Reuters)

In Manila more than a thousand activists marched, calling President Rodrigo Duterte a “macho-fascist” for his lewd comments and treatment of his female critics.

In Iran, where there has been a spate of protests against mandatory Islamic dress, women and men gathered in front of the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare, chanting slogans, videos on social media showed.

“No to gender inequality, No to discriminatory laws” the women chanted in a video.

The Center for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based advocacy group, said at least 12 people were arrested. Reuters could not independently verify the reports.

Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said on Wednesday that one of the girls who removed her veil in Tehran to protest against compulsory hijab has been sentenced to two years in jail. Dolatabadi said the woman, whom he did not name, was found guilty of “promoting corruption by removing her veil in public.”